There's A Unity In Division
by Gangsta Videl
Summary: [Drabble] When conformity is the only key, can masking intentions and breaking apart traditions unlock a new era?


There's A Unity In Division  
  
A/N: And there's a laughing Schuldig inside my head. Right now. He and Nanami have made a truce long enough to laugh at this one. Not that I mind, too much---it not only scares my Crawford, but it lets me work on Cynical!Crawford. A ha ha ha... ^^v   
  
Misura, Star of Heaven.... you must know that I blame the both of you for this. Here's to ye both! *glass clinky*  
  
Disclaimer: D00d. No.  
  
*******  
  
Conformity was always the key. The key which could unlock any door and set free any prisoner.  
  
To conform and mold yourself into a being that you may not have wanted to be, to become like they whom you detested if only for the sole purpose of a Darwin-esque survival, be it of sheer necessity or only to gain more, it was always the key.  
  
Brad Crawford smiled slyly. For many people, the realization did not come easily, if at all. But he, he was a being superior to those all around him---those of Weiß, those of Schreient, and especially those of Esstet. What fools they all were! To think that he, a man of sheer integrity and ambition, would ever conform himself to the mold of a perfect slave and allow himself to be beaten, tricked, or used.  
  
As if he would ever allow it.  
  
He was strong, he was proud; he was an American. Shunned by the Japanese culture for refusing to conform, he'd done what few had dared to do.  
  
He made himself stand out.  
  
Blending in was easier said than done; foreigners stood out like painful blisters, rotting and causing the overall ruination of the island far before they even knew they were the cause of it all. They didn't even have to be there only a day, and they knew---everyone knew. The foreigners had come, arrived, snuffling out something hidden like the accursed Frenchmen used pigs to locate their truffles. Whatever it was they were after, whatever they wanted so desperately to seek, they would have to pass through the walls and become like all the rest of society.  
  
Something that had yet to be done.  
  
Crawford's glasses flashed as he looked around the room, giving the signal to his second-in-command and fellow foreigner, the Germanic telepath, Schuldig. If there was anyone fast enough and slick enough to get in and get out without disturbing the fight between the two rival teams---no, the two worthless teams---it had to be him.  
  
Any Japanese man, as the American knew quite well, who chose a foreigner for a bride would be shunned for all time. There was no way that woman, in any way, shape, or form, could ever be fully prepared for the tasks of becoming a housewife in such a society. Her head would be filled with ideas of equality and lust, and she'd know nothing of the true basis of the culture.  
  
And again, the sly, rathor-thin smile returned to the man's face. A Japanese woman who would marry a foreign man gave up on her culture and was all but excluded in everything.   
  
There was a certain unity in the code, from dividing a nation like that. To simply get his hands on any woman was simple enough, though far too easy. Any woman could have done, even one of those sickening Schreient females who dared to even think that they were close to Schwarz's level of superiority. They deserved to die if they couldn't even reach that conclusion.  
  
"Get me the girl," he said to no one, though everyone heard him. That was the kind of person he was, straight and forward only to the point where that faÇade ended and the reality began.  
  
Brad Crawford was not a man who would bend from any pressure. To show flexibility in one's disposition was to show weakness, and to give out your weakness was asking for death to come.   
  
Dying on the battlefield was not honourable, no matter how many times the patriarchs of the Crawford family back in the states may have ever claimed so. It was cunning and bravery that won battles, the plans, schemes, and the deceptions.   
  
His smile became a smirk, and he looked in at the angelic-like beauty that Schuldig had ensured for his team.   
  
The vaguest hint of something touched him then, a sense that few possessed and even fewer knew how to use. His eyes shut and the smog filled his senses again, light and sound coming together to form the vivid pictures in his mind.  
  
The Schreient would fall, and Nagi with them, though the boy would be returned to his proper place in only three days' time. The youngest of the wenches would pull through as well, and leave her place in a few hours time, completely missing the person she claimed to love so much. The irony in it all was something to desire, and hold, as if it were something palpible, that could be touched.  
  
This girl, however...   
  
"The Fujimiya girl is ours, now," Schuldig enlightened, voice twisted and corrupt, as every fibre of his being, his soul, seemed to be.  
  
Crawford tilted his head up, scenes falling from sight and back into nothingness. "'Ours'? You are mistaken."  
  
The German's glance turned to him, and away from the sleeping face of the girl. Not just the girl that Esset wanted, but a lovely little Japanese woman in the making, a girl who would bring shame and dishonor on her family for being with him, a foreigner, a disease...   
  
"Schuldig... " the American began pointedly, and the Germanic fiend listened. To not listen was as bad as sin was to a Catholic household, or the Bishops to whom the Catholics prayed.  
  
"Your mistake is thus; the Fujimiya girls is not yours."  
  
"No?"  
  
The smirk returned, and thoughts of anger and deception. So easily it was, to hide in the grass and lurk, waiting for the appropriate time to strike and rid the world of all that was wrong, of all that Weiß liked to say they stood for...   
  
"No, indeed." One hand swept up to remove the glass and metal frames that corrected his already poor vision. Eyes glinted in the darkness, eyes that were far from the correct 'almond' shape.  
  
"The girl is mine... "  
  
*******  
  
A/N: This is what happens when my French teacher goes into an hour-long lecture about how France, the U.S., and Japan are all very different. Oh, and when I consider the idea of ever pairing up Brad and Aya-chan. X_x   
  
And someone, please tell my French teacher that she's trying too hard. I already know what a yukata is and that the Japanese remove their shoes at the door. Sheesh, woman. I know what a miko is, too, so, uh.... calm yourself?  
  
... and I just realized that the last line is a Micheal Jackson song. Oh, damn. That's pretty scary right there. Right up there with the pairing... x_X  
  
---Gangsta Videl 


End file.
